Book #45: Ambush

Having started a new job this week, a lot closer to home, I've found myself waking up and reading, and then reading in the evenings, it's a lovely new routine, and has been helped by having a very very readable book! Another new author for me this week, but an all-too-familiar genre. Yep, it's another Roman fiction! But it's another period of the Roman Empire that I've not read fiction about before, so I'll happily plough through anything!

So here's the cover, Ambush by Geraint Jones. It was originally called Blood Forest, but for some reason the name was changed, I'm not sure why, it just was. It's set in 9AD, on the very fringes of the Roman Empire in Germany. Anyone with knowledge of Roman History will be aware of the events of 9AD in Germany. The book is centred around the massacre and betrayal at Teutoberg Forest, one of the lowest moments for the Roman Legions.

Unlike all the other Roman fictions that I've read so far, this one is told in the first person, and it works. I wasn't sure at first, but it really does work.

So the main character, I thought he was a bit of an arrogant prat at first. We don't really know anything about him, he's found in the woods by a Roman patrol, and taken in as a survivor of a brutal Barbarian attack. He claims to be suffering from amnesia and cannot remember a thing, and to be honest it was frustrating. As to start with, he wasn't at all interested in his comrades and it annoyed me, big time. But I grew to like him as he grew to be more of a 'team player'.

The storyline was pretty good, following the doomed campaign from its start to the bloody end, and thankfully our 'hero' lives to fight another day!

Being told from the 'squaddie' perspective, the book explores the more mundane tasks of the campaign, such as building the camp, sentry duty etc. It helps that the author has drawn on his own experiences here, having completed 3 tours of duty in Iraq. The book explores the similarities in warfare throughout the millennia, the boredom, the sporadic action but most of all the impact of life on campaign. What we now know as PTSD is all too evident in the book, with soldiers employing different coping mechanisms as horror after horror hits the army. It was quite a stark read, but its one that the author should be proud of.

The book is very graphic, very vivid, full of blood guts and gore and also dark squaddie humour and the language that accompanies it. If you can get past that, you'll enjoy the book!

Ambush: 3cm

Total Read so far: 45 books, 135.5cm

Total left to read: 57.5cm